Claim A says A 1960 science paper named Friday, Nov. 13, 2026 doomsday. Claim B says A 1960 paper blamed a 2026 comet for Earth's doom. Claim A is true, and Claim B is completely made up.
The paper was titled "Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, A.D. 2026." It ran in the journal Science on November 4, 1960, written by Heinz von Foerster, Patricia Mora and Lawrence Amiot.
The trio wasn't studying asteroids or prophecies. They were studying human population growth. Their equation fit past world population figures, then projected forward, and it solved to roughly 2026.87, give or take 5.5 years.
The math had a catch: the formula sent the number of people toward infinity. Von Foerster called the moment "doomsday" because the population figure blew up, and he picked a Friday the 13th near the middle of that window. Even better, November 13 was his own birthday, born in 1911.
The forecast tracked real population surprisingly well for decades. Then, around the 1990s, falling birth rates bent the curve away from the equation. The date arrives this Friday, and no infinite crowd is expected.
As for Claim B, the paper had nothing to do with comets or anything from space. Its doomsday was purely about population growth, calculated from an equation.
Think you'd have spotted the real one? Send this to a friend and see if they can beat you before Friday the 13th arrives.
